


Mentor

by accurst_writer



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, i feel bad for killing so many characters off, probably, very young character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:33:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26989048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accurst_writer/pseuds/accurst_writer
Summary: Lucy Gray Baird lived and had to mentor the District 12 tributes after her own victory. She gave up on getting them home, but one of them made it, and maybe, she even made a friend.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Mentor

**Author's Note:**

> I noticed while reading TBOSAS that Lucy Gray does the same thing Haymitch does of calling people "sweetheart". I wonder where he picked that up.

“So, how do I win this thing?”Haymitch Abernathy stared across the table at the older woman. She stared back, unimpressed, and took a swig of white liquor from a bottle in her hand.“Honestly, sweetheart? You don’t. I’ve seen kids go in for 40 years now, and almost every year, one of them will ask me how to win. None of them have come home. Get it through your head. You’re likely dead in within two weeks”  
She took another sip, and Haymitch sighed. “You’ve got to tell me what to do. How did you win your games?”  
“I cheated. Look, I’ll give you all the advice I’ve got. Watch out for One, Two, and Four. They train, and they were intimidating enough back in my games. Make an alliance.”“No!” Haymitch interrupted. “If I have an ally, we might end up having to kill each other!”  
“Sure, sweetheart, don’t take my advice. End up dead. I’m used to it, but the odds are stacked against you as is, and I thought you wanted to go home.”  
Haymitch nodded, and listened intently to everything else his mentor had to say. 

After he won, he met her again. She was still swigging from a white liquor bottle, and he wondered if she’d ever stopped.  
“Congratulations, sweetheart. Welcome to hell. Guess you’re my neighbour now. I can give you the name of a good liquor supplier.”  
Haymitch shook his head. “I don’t drink. My pa drank himself half to death when I was young.”  
“Let me know how that works out for you.” She took another drink.

Not two weeks later, back in District 12, Haymitch, out of breath, knocked on her door, with tears in his eyes.“Lucy Gray, they’re all dead! I went home and they’re all dead!”  
“Who are?” “My family, my girl! They’re all dead and it’s my fault!”  
Lucy Gray looked at the sixteen year old boy crying on her doorstep, and invited him in.  
“You want a drink?” She held out her liquor bottle again.Haymitch considered it for a couple of seconds, and shook his head. “No thanks.”  
“So, how is it your fault? You weren’t even home, were you?”“No. It’s my fault because of the arena, I wasn’t supposed to use the force field! The Capitol killed them to get back at me!”  
He started crying again, and Lucy Gray took a draft of her liquor. “Join the club, sweetheart.”“How do you mean?” Haymitch looked at her. “Did you have family, too?”  
Ignoring his question, she stood up and started putting dishes in the sink. As she turned, her long skirt brushed against a guitar standing against the wall, and it fell over in a cloud of dust that could only mean it hadn’t been touched in years.Haymitch took that as his cue to leave. As he left, Lucy Gray ignored the guitar as though she hadn’t seen it fall. 

The next year, on the train to the Capitol, Lucy Gray was drinking again, and Haymitch was trying to give the tributes, a frightened 12 year old girl from the Seam and a blonde haired merchant’s son, some advice.“Make sure to watch out for the Careers. Get a knife. Get clean water. Don’t make a fire at night.”They both died in the bloodbath, getting gutted by the girl from District 2.  
“Fuck.” Haymitch muttered, standing up from his monitor as the boy’s canon fired.   
He’d barely left the room before he ran into Lucy Gray, who was leaning against a wall, her head in her hands.   
“Hey. You holding up?”  
She moved her fingers to reveal a tear-stained face.   
“Yeah.”

Unsurprisingly, they ended up in one of the nearby bars.   
“It was the girl.” Lucy Gray whispered, after she’d had a few drinks. “She looked so much like someone I used to know. Just a kid.”  
Haymitch nodded. “The boy... he was Maysilee’s cousin. They looked alike.”

Drowning in the memories of someone she once knew, Lucy Gray held out the bottle. An empty gesture, as they’d danced this dance before, and he didn’t drink.

Being swallowed alive by the guilt of his family’s death, and Maysilee’s, and now this year’s tributes, Haymitch took it. 

“It doesn’t get easier, does it?” Haymitch asked.   
Lucy Gray’s silence was answer enough. 

It didn’t.  
Years passed, and it didn’t.  
By the 60th games, they could both be considered alcoholics.For once, Haymitch had thought that his tribute might make it. He seemed like a fighter.He didn’t.

The day before the next Reaping, Haymitch and Lucy Gray found themselves in her kitchen, drowning their sorrows in the finest white liquor the only seller in 12 could provide.  
Lucy Gray was more drunk than Haymitch had ever seen her, and that was saying something.“It’s been 50 years since I won, and I’m still watching them all go to their deaths.”  
He nodded. “I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how I’m going to keep doing it.”  
She sighed. “You keep going because you have no other option.” 

Haymitch looked at the guitar standing in the corner. “Do you play that thing?”  
Lucy Gray shook her head. “Not anymore. Not since-“  
She broke off and took another swig.   
“Since what?” He pressed.   
“My family... they were my band. I haven’t played since they died.”“What happened to them?” He could guess.  
“They were hanged.”Haymitch was shocked. “They hanged your whole family? Publicly? What for?”Lucy Gray laughed mirthlessly. “Associating with me, I’d call it. But they said they broke the law. Not sure since when there was a law against music, but that’s how it is.”

Haymitch sensed she wanted to talk more.“How did they not get you? Because you’re a victor?”  
Lucy Gray shook her head. “I wasn’t in the district when they arrested them, or I’d have fought tooth and nail to keep them safe. I was dragging myself through the woods with a gunshot wound to the leg. It took me two weeks to get myself back to 12, and when I got back I found the fence. There never used to be a fence. I managed to get over it, somehow.” She downed the rest of her liquor bottle and took a breath.“I saw a crowd by the tree. I ran the second I realised what was happening. I knew it would be them. By the time I got there, three of them were dead. I watched the fourth one die. She was just a kid, Haymitch. I knew the Capitol wasn’t above killing children, but… but. She was so young.”

After years of watching the Games, Haymitch knew that the Capitol wasn’t above killing children, even for entertainment. 12 year olds had died in front of his eyes. “How young was she?”  
Lucy Gray had started sobbing into her shawl. “Eight. She was eight. They hanged an eight year old after making her watch her family die.”Haymitch didn’t know what to say. Wordlessly, he reached out and put his hand on her shoulder.“Her name was Maude Ivory, and she was eight years old. And then there was Clerk Carmine, he was twelve. Barb Azure was twenty-three. And Tam Amber, twenty-six. They all died that day. I haven’t looked at my guitar since. It just sits there, gathering dust. The thought of playing it without any accompaniment ruins me.”

Haymitch could tell she’d bottled this up for years. Those names probably hadn’t been mentioned since they died. It was good for her, he decided, to let it out. “Tell me more about them.”“Maude Ivory played the drum. She was going to be the lead singer in a few years, when I stepped down. She was always running about, and she was scared of snakes.Clerk Carmine claimed he could do anything. He played the fiddle with us, and he would argue with Maude Ivory a lot, just squabbles, like little kids do.Barb Azure played the bass. She had a girlfriend who lived in the Seam, and I saw her sneak out the house at night to go visit her every so often. She loved the sky when it was blue, because it was the same colour as her name.Tam Amber almost never spoke. He played the mandolin, and he would never use more words than he had to. He was always looking out for us.”

She got up and walked over to the guitar, dusting it off with her hand. She ran her hand across the strings, and winced at how out of tune they were. “That’s what not being used for 50 years will do to you.” She started to hum a note and tune the guitar.Haymitch just sat there, swigging from his liquor bottle occasionally. He didn’t want to speak, and also he wanted to hear Lucy Gray play.

She started to pluck different strings, and hummed, before carefully singing a song he’d never heard.“Are you, are you, coming to the tree, where they strung up a man, they say who murdered three”

When she finished, she put the guitar back in its corner. “I think I’m going to bed. Thank you, Haymitch. I needed to talk about them.” She reached into her dress pocket, pulled out a silver powder compact and admired it.

Haymitch got up and left. “Good night, Lucy Gray.”  
“Goodbye.”

The next day, Haymitch showed up with the Reaping with a hangover so bad it took him a while to notice that there was no second victor’s chair. After the tributes had been selected (a pair of Seam kids), he asked the escort about it. “Why’s Lucy Gray not here?”

“You didn’t hear? She was found dead in her home. There was a cup of liquor and rat poison by her bed. She probably killed herself.”

“Great” muttered Haymitch, picking up a bottle of liquor from the table on the train. “Guess I’m mentoring alone from now on.”


End file.
